# Why do most people believe that Gen 3 was the best one?



## Ether's Bane (Dec 12, 2013)

What it says in the title, basically.

(Although, I'm more of a Gen 4 guy myself.)


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## shy ♡ (Dec 12, 2013)

'Most people'? Have you taken a poll of the pokemon fandom?


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## Murkrow (Dec 12, 2013)

I think we're hearing a lot about gen 3 recently because it's next in line for a remake if they're going to continue with remakes.

I'm not sure about "most" people thinking it's the best.

There are certainly good things about gen 3 though! The music was cool, a lot of decent Pokémon designs, I think it had the best contests, secret bases were pretty fun, and there was a lot of exploring to be done!

Gen 2 was my favourite though :P


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## Ether's Bane (Dec 12, 2013)

pathos said:


> 'Most people'? Have you taken a poll of the pokemon fandom?


No, but it seems that on most Pokemon websites, Gen 3 is the consensus pick.


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## Momo(th) (Dec 12, 2013)

It's my favorite.

I liked the variety R/S/E offered in terms of locations, the pokemon were cool, it had a pretty good metagame, secret bases, it was the first to really start promoting mascot legandaries, and the music to this day still hits a certain vibe in me.


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## Murkrow (Dec 12, 2013)

Zodiark said:


> it was the first to really start promoting mascot legandaries


This is actually a big negative for me. I preferred it when legendaries were _just_ legendaries. Now they pretty much have to be a part of the storyline and I can never tell if they thought of the legendaries first and thought of a story around them, or thought of the story first and made up legendaries to fit.


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## Butterfree (Dec 12, 2013)

Because of this:






(courtesy of Chibi Pika)

The arrows stretch over time, hence why the "Best Gen Evar!!" arrow is still over gen 3.


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## Momo(th) (Dec 12, 2013)

Murkrow said:


> This is actually a big negative for me. I preferred it when legendaries were _just_ legendaries. Now they pretty much have to be a part of the storyline and I can never tell if they thought of the legendaries first and thought of a story around them, or thought of the story first and made up legendaries to fit.


Sorry, but I think I  mispoke. I felt that starting gen III they really began to pour effort into the legendaries.


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## kyeugh (Dec 12, 2013)

Murkrow said:


> This is actually a big negative for me. I preferred it when legendaries were _just_ legendaries. Now they pretty much have to be a part of the storyline and I can never tell if they thought of the legendaries first and thought of a story around them, or thought of the story first and made up legendaries to fit.


The fact that you can't tell whether the legendaries or the story came first just means that it's intertwined really well.  That's not a bad thing.

In any case, I'm yet to play Gen III, but from what I've heard, it's a pretty casual game, but it's fun to play.  At the time, it was revolutionary.  We went for basically terrible graphics right onto vibrant colors and amazing spritework, and then there were the new communication features and and and... it was just generally more developed than the other games, so at the time it seemed much better; it seems like first impressions last, in this sense.

That's my two cents.  I haven't even played the game, so don't listen to me.  :I


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## Murkrow (Dec 12, 2013)

Butterfree said:


> (courtesy of Chibi Pika)


Who is that, so I can rant at them for making that image? :P



Zodiark said:


> Sorry, but I think I  mispoke. I felt that starting gen III they really began to pour effort into the legendaries.


And I don't like that effort. I liked it when legendaries were just other Pokémon, just rarer. The birds and beasts of gens 1 and 2 were... just birds and beasts. Nothing really special about them, they were just so rare they happened to have legends about them in-universe. I doubt as much effort was put into them as any of the mascot legendaries. (yes, I know that Lugia and Ho-Oh were mascots, shhh)

EDIT:


Qvalador said:


> The fact that you can't tell whether the legendaries or the story came first just means that it's intertwined really well.  That's not a bad thing.


Just because it's intertwined really well, doesn't mean the things that are intertwined are themselves any good! That said, gen 5 was brilliant. I'm not fond of Reshiram or Zerkrom but they at least managed to make a story with them that was good.


Gen 3 is casual? I'm not disagreeing with you but I don't see how it's any more casual than Pokémon games are in general.


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## kyeugh (Dec 12, 2013)

It seemed a lot more laid back, I dunno.  Keep in mind that I haven't played them.

It's a bit more upbeat than Gen I and II, because it's the first "the world is in jeapordy oh no" plot, but from my understanding it's generally a pretty cool region (geographically.  I mean, they have a space station), and the villainous teams are at least kind of quirky as opposed to, "You're going to get beat, you rotten brat."  Then again, it's less upbeat than the newer Gens, but not any less great.  So it's kind of in that nice "in-between zone," and I think that's why people like it.


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## Karousever (Dec 12, 2013)

Hmmm, well Gen 3 was my favorite generation. Though to be fair, this may have a large amount to do with the fact that Ruby was my first Pokemon game ever. I really like Hoenn itself, and that's why I am so desperately hoping for a remake, because that region is just so...good feeling. Like the way it felt was just nice. I really like a lot of the Pokemon, and I admit I love the secret bases and the contests. I can't really put it into words. Though to be fair, the fact that it was my first Pokemon experience and I had played it for quite a while before I got my next game may have a lot to do with why I am so fond of it. But I know that even taking away the nostalgia that Gen 3 is my favorite. It's just harder to explain. Bah I give no insight whatsoever here.


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## Momo(th) (Dec 12, 2013)

Murkrow said:


> -
> 
> 
> And I don't like that effort. I liked it when legendaries were just other Pokémon, just rarer. The birds and beasts of gens 1 and 2 were... just birds and beasts. Nothing really special about them, they were just so rare they happened to have legends about them in-universe. I doubt as much effort was put into them as any of the mascot legendaries. (yes, I know that Lugia and Ho-Oh were mascots, shhh)


Sorry, I meant that starting in gen 3 I felt that instead of legendaries being random birds they  were well researched and anesthetically unique beings, as opposed to a Fire/Water/Thunder trio.


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## Dar (Dec 12, 2013)

Me, personally? One thing I really like is the art in the games. It's my favorite style out of any of the other generations, and the 3rd gen Pokémon have great designs as well. Most of my favorite Pokémon come from third gen (aside from my #1, Cubone). I like the region of Hoenn as well, and also there's the fact that _you actually have a dad._ I feel like that brought upon just a bit more immersion, especially since you talk to him when you start your journey and defeat him halfway through.


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## Spoon (Dec 13, 2013)

I'm sure a lot of people want to revisit it, myself included. Plus the games got a lack of flack for not being backwards compatible when they were first released, the Pokémon designs (huge graphic jump allowed for more variety), lack of relation to the older gens, and the Pokémon fad started to dying around that time so Gen III wasn't especially popular. In my opinion, the idea of a re-release, the de-emphasis on former problems, and it being the first game for a lot people in the Pokémon fandom now are why the fandom seems to really like Gen III as of late. And it wasn't a bad gen overall, either.

Beyond sidegames, Gen III wasn't and still isn't my favorite. (Got me on Gen IV being my least favorite, though.)


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## Storm Earth and Fire (Dec 13, 2013)

Always seemed like a hipster generation to me. Not generally popular. Why do I like it?

1. The games themselves lack problems. The only major glitch was the berry bug, and thanks to technology that we probably didn't have before, they managed to fix that. Gen 1 and 2, by comparison, were kinda janky. Gen 2's glitches were more stuff you had to look for, but gen 1 had some stuff that you could just run into. Gen 3, on the other hand, was devoid of major glitches. It made the game feel solidly put together. More legit, if you will.

2. Abilities are a pretty awesome addition to battling.

3. I love double battles.

4. Hoenn is probably still my favorite region. It felt like a pretty quirky place compared to Kanto and Johto, and I like it more than Sinnoh and Unova. I liked diving, and I liked the cities a lot, especially Sootopolis. There's every environment besides an icy place, something for almost everyone.

5. Best graphics in the main series, IMO. The overworld sprites are great looking, and when we moved to 3D overworlds in gen 4, I could not dig it. Gen 6 certainly comes a long way, but you can't replace good old sprites in my book. I almost dread a gen 3 remake because it won't be sprites anymore.

6. Solrock, Aggron, and Blaziken. Or whatever are your personal favorites from gen 3.

7. Shout-outs to the GameCube games, both Colosseum and XD were big hits with me.

8. My age. When gen 3 came out was when my eyes were actually opened to the inner workings of Pokemon and the fandom as well. It was when I first started going to tCoD to read up on game mechanics. I tried to get into competitive battling (especially doubles). At the same time, it's when I started roleplaying. There's just a lot of memories surrounding this generation. And quite frankly, the change from GBC to GBA was mindblowing when you're just 12 years old, and Sapphire is one of the first GBA games I got. Nothing's been quite as drastic, especially because I didn't get into gen 4 until Platinum.

It was a pleasant and likeable generation. Maybe a bit strange at first but heck, we were going to a new console, so of course there's a huge shift coming from the GBC.

I don't think I could go back and play them, though, the games afterward are infinitely more convenient, plus the big change in battle mechanics since then make it hard for me to easily go back.


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## Ether's Bane (Dec 13, 2013)

Butterfree said:


> Because of this:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I think I've figured it out (and answered my own question).

Nostalgia/childhood memories.

Generally, those who enjoy indulging in the fandom as well as the source material tend to be around 15 to 21 years old. Most Pokemon players would've started playing the games somewhere between the ages of 7 and 11. Therefore, the majority of the fandom would have started somewhere between four and fourteen years ago, with the bulk of this majority between... five and twelve years ago. If you apply this to 2013, this makes the bounds 2001 and 2008, which is... the second half of Gen 2, all of Gen 3, and the beginning on Gen 4. That's how the chart applies; during Gen 4 days, Gen 2 was the consensus pick. Five to twelve years before 2009 was... 1997 to 2004. Much of Gen 1, all of Gen 2, and the beginning of Gen 3. 

This is also why Gen 1 and Gen 3 nostalgia are stronger than Gen 2 nostalgia - Gens 1, 3, and 4 ran for four years, while Gens 2 and 5 only ran for three years.

Gen 1: 1996-1999
Gen 2: 1999-2002
Gen 3: 2002-2006
Gen 4: 2006-2010
Gen 5: 2010-2013
Gen 6: 2013-present

Am I on to something here?


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## Spoon (Dec 13, 2013)

Ether's Bane said:


> Gen 1: 1996-1999
> Gen 2: 1999-2002
> Gen 3: 2002-2006
> Gen 4: 2006-2010
> ...


Those are the dates for the Japanese release dates. For most of the English speaking fandom it's by the localized dates. I'm going to use US release dates as it got most of the English releases first.

Gen I: September 30th, 1998-September 4th, 2000 (two years)
Gen II: September 4th 2000-March 19th, 2003 (two and half years)
Gen III: March 19th 2003-April 22nd, 2007 (four years and a month)
Gen IV: April 22nd, 2007-March 4th, 2011 (four years minus a month)
Gen V: March 4th, 2011-October 12th, 2013 (two years and seven months)

Not to mention that a lot of the so called nostalgia covered by the chart has to do with HGSS and FRLG.


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## shy ♡ (Dec 13, 2013)

Storm said:


> Always seemed like a hipster generation to me. Not generally popular. Why do I like it?
> 
> 1. The games themselves lack problems. The only major glitch was the berry bug, and thanks to technology that we probably didn't have before, they managed to fix that. Gen 1 and 2, by comparison, were kinda janky. Gen 2's glitches were more stuff you had to look for, but gen 1 had some stuff that you could just run into. Gen 3, on the other hand, was devoid of major glitches. It made the game feel solidly put together. More legit, if you will.


You know you could clone your pokemon (and by extension whatever item they were holding) in emerald, right...?


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## Superbird (Dec 13, 2013)

Part of it is also that the pokémon fad had died out by the time the third gen was released. Because of this, only the true pokémon fans actually saw the third gen in action, and those people perhaps liked it. Since those people are still major voices in the fandom today, it may have spread as popular opinion.


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## Murkrow (Dec 13, 2013)

As I posted in the grr thread, it might be possible that people think gen 4 is the worst now, because they always thought it was the worst. It's just that when it was new, people ignored their opinions because obviously the only reason anyone would ever like older games more than a newer game is nostalgia. And nostalgia means your opinion is automatically wrong.



Zodiark said:


> Sorry, I meant that starting in gen 3 I felt that instead of legendaries being random birds they  were well researched and anesthetically unique beings, as opposed to a Fire/Water/Thunder trio.


Yes, and I'm saying that's what I don't like. I'm not saying you're wrong, I just disagree is all.


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## ultraviolet (Dec 13, 2013)

Superbird said:


> Part of it is also that the pokémon fad had died out by the time the third gen was released. Because of this, only the true pokémon fans actually saw the third gen in action, and those people perhaps liked it.


I disagree! People grow and move away from things and then come back to them later and that's pretty normal. I also know lots of people who stopped playing pokemon because their peers stopped playing it or because they were bullied for playing pokemon at a time when it wasn't considered especially cool. This doesn't mean they're not ~true fans~ (but really, the need to define a true fan is really, really unecessary). There's also the fact that tons of people have come to the fandom since gen III, and there are tons of pokemon fans who really didn't like gen III. 

This is why I'm kind of hesitant about this thread at all. Is Gen 3 actually considered the best?? I was under the impression that it was kind of a base breaker, and I know lots of people really disliked it (or at least a loud minority).


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## Butterfree (Dec 13, 2013)

Murkrow said:


> As I posted in the grr thread, it might be possible that people think gen 4 is the worst now, because they always thought it was the worst. It's just that when it was new, people ignored their opinions because obviously the only reason anyone would ever like older games more than a newer game is nostalgia. And nostalgia means your opinion is automatically wrong.


It's not an Every Individual Pokémon Fan's Personal Opinion Simulator; it's a Pokémon Fandom General Opinion Simulator.

The point is not that people who think gen 4 is the worst now thought gen 3 was the worst during gen 4 and gen 2 was the worst during gen 3 and so on, or that people who dislike gen 4 don't have perfectly valid reasons for doing so. The point is that _the general opinion of the visible fanbase as a whole_ has noticeably shifted according to a particular pattern. Some of that is because individuals change their personal opinion, sure, but most of it is probably simply because people phase in and out of fandom participation, and the average opinions of the people who enter the fandom are different from the average opinions of the people who leave - likely in large part for nostalgia-related reasons. (This is basically the same thing Ether's Bane was talking about.)

And by nostalgia-related reasons, I don't mean "haha you losers love gen 3 and hate gen 4 because you are robots incapable of appreciating anything except because it's the thing that existed when you were a child"; I mean that _on average_ people are biased towards the first games they played. This is very natural: for instance, if you started playing during gen 3, you're unlikely to miss how legendaries used to just be there instead of having the storyline revolve around them, because your idea of what legendaries are _supposed_ to be would have been colored by the third-generation games instead; you'd probably find it weird how the legendaries in the first two generations are just _there_, instead.

Nostalgia doesn't make you wrong because there is no "right" here in the first place. People have different tastes and preferences, some of them colored by nostalgia, and that's _okay_. You don't need to get so defensive that somebody decided to poke light fun at popular shifts in opinion.


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## Karousever (Dec 13, 2013)

Butterfree said:


> This is very natural: for instance, if you started playing during gen 3, you're unlikely to miss how legendaries used to just be there instead of having the storyline revolve around them, because your idea of what legendaries are _supposed_ to be would have been colored by the third-generation games instead; you'd probably find it weird how the legendaries in the first two generations are just _there_, instead.


Being exactly the person she's talking about, I can vouch that Butterfree certainly has a point. In fact I _do_ think it odd, legendaries just being there, rather than being a major part of the story. And it's probably for the exact reason she said, that's just what I grew up with. 

And I know I especially loved that game as a kid, because I know I beat it and restarted it many, many times. I have never really restarted a Pokemon game (from the end) more than once, especially not consecutively. But I was in love with this game as a child.


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## Momo(th) (Dec 14, 2013)

Storm said:


> . There's every environment besides an icy place, something for almost everyone.


And even then we have the deep parts of Shoal Cave.

Dang now I want to go play Emerald.


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## Alxprit (Dec 16, 2013)

I tend to judge a generation first on its Pokemon, secondly on its reigon, and thirdly on its mechanics, although there is some fluctuation. (Like Diamond and Pearl's slowness just killed it for me.) For Hoenn, it hits them all. It's got some of my favorite designs, including the ever-so-amazing Latias. The reigon is really big, and you can tell that compared to Kanto and Johto, which are small enough to both exist in a single game. Now that I think about it, maybe that's why the Sevii Islands exist: just to make FR/LG feel as big as RSE. It's not just its size that matters, it's places worth exploring. I mean, Pokemon isn't exactly known for its optional areas, but at least there were a lot of routes with different paths, areas one could access with different bicycles, the whole diving thing extending longevity, so on and so forth. And the mechanics are pretty solid, despite the physical special split not happening yet. Abilities are important, natures are important, and so on. Also, it seems natural to come back to it, compared to Gen 4 or even 5. It's just really smooth.

That's only my opinion, however. Gen 3 isn't even my favorite gen: usually I lend my support to the current reigon, in this case Kalos. But Gen 3 will still hit a good nerve with me every time, and if I ever have children, I'd want to introduce Pokemon to them with that generation, before they go straight to whatever future we have waiting.


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## Autumn (Dec 18, 2013)

gen 3 is my favorite and has been since like 2007 and that was when everyone was praising gen 2 like there was no tomorrow. so while the pokémon fandom simulator may have only started pointing at gen 3 somewhat recently, i've loved it since day one.

i could give my reasons but i don't feel like it right now lol


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## Negrek (Dec 19, 2013)

I seriously doubt that "most people" believe that Gen III was the best, but I'm definitely a fan. Really just popped in here to gape at the fact that nobody has mentioned the _Battle Frontier_ omg best thing. Other than that I pretty much love the things other people have consistently mentioned: what is still the best implementation of secret bases to date (seriously GF how do you get WORSE at these over time), the environment (Fortree City <3), and the pokémon. Especially the pokémon. I mean come on, you've got the badass legendaries, stuff like the aron line, absol, tropius, sableye, hilarious things like wailord, nosepass, ABSOL, etc.

It _was_ definitely the start of the hideous proliferation of legendaries, though, which I've not been a fan of. I really do not need like twenty legendaries, four or so of which are not available during normal gameplay, GF, thanks.


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